LVIV, Ukraine — As a trickle of civilians from the brutalized city of Mariupol headed to safety Tuesday, Russian forces pressed their assault on Ukraine’s eastern heartland, striking at targets across a region that U.S. officials warn is under threat of annexation by Moscow.
The Ukrainian military said Tuesday that 12 attacks were repelled overnight in Luhansk and Donetsk, the two districts that make up the eastern industrial Donbas area coveted by Russia. Officials also reported new shelling in Izium and in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, which has undergone some of the most vicious assault since the war began Feb. 24. The attacks could not be independently verified.
At the same time, dozens of exhausted residents of Mariupol, the besieged port in southern Ukraine, were en route to the interior city of Zaporizhzhia after their rescue from a steelworks where they had taken shelter, along with local fighters. At least 100 civilians have been evacuated from the Azovstal plant since Saturday, but hundreds of other people remain holed up in the sprawling complex, which Russian forces are blockading.
